OSR Why B/X?

The Sigil said:

I think this working theory is probably on the right track.

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overgeeked said:

Sort of, but not really. There's a lot of cruft to the later mechanical additions as well. Domain-level play is a common add-on to many OSR games, so I doubt that's the problem. I, sure. But not C and M. Most likely it's because B/X is lighter, cleaner, and simpler which seems to be one of the main draws of OSR gaming.

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Sacrosanct said:

yup. Mentzer's basic book is almost double the page count of Moldvay's basic. And comes in two books. I think that has an impact.

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Yeah, I think it's mostly three factors:

1) Page count/use at the table. B/X has explanatory material, but it's two pretty lean 64 page volumes packed with content. Mentzer Basic is divided into two books, the first of which devotes a large amount of its page count to the two solo introductory scenarios. While many folks argue that this was the best edition for teaching a newbie, once you're an experienced player those pages are useless in your average session. The content in the higher level boxes is not especially compelling, with the possible exception of the weapon mastery rules, which center on a giant table which is awkward and annoying to read and use.

2) Nostalgia & aesthetics. Both B/X and BECMI were hugely successful, but B/X's heyday ('81-'83) closely coincided with the height of the D&D pop culture craze (late '79-'85), whereas the CMI sets started coming out in '85 and later as the fad died out and D&D sales crashed, so I think fewer people ever used them even if their original games did go to high level. While BECMI is particularly beloved internationally/in Europe, where in some countries it was the first widely-available or translated version, in the US I think B/X started more people. And while Elmore's art is loved by huge numbers of people, it's a distinctly different aesthetic from Erol Otus', so a person who imprinted on B/X is likely to associate Otus with that magical feeling, less so Elmore.

3) You have to play for years, generally, to get up to level 15+. And there weren't a lot of good scenarios published for that. They're challenging to write, as characters have more and more magic to bypass challenges. It's more likely for folks to end a campaign well before the Companion levels, and start over with new characters if the group lasts that long. For most folks, levels 1-14 are all that, or really more than, they need.